北京英语导游考试 午门前讲故宫

The Forbidden City in Front of the Meridian Gate

（the history of the Forbidden City in the Ming and Qing Dynasties; the origin of the name; the layout of the forbidden city; the meridian gate and its square ）Ladies and gentlemen, good morning. Today we are going to visit the Forbidden City. Firstly, I’ll give you a short introduction about it. The Forbidden City is located in the center of Beijing. It was the former Imperial Palace for the Ming and Qing emperors. The Forbidden City was first built in 1420 during the Ming Dynasty. While the Qing emperors also stayed inside after they entered Beijing. Starting from the third emperor of the Ming dynasty, Zhu Di, to the last emperor of the Qing dynasty, puyi, altogether 24 emperors lived and conducted state affairs in the Forbidden City, 14 of them were Ming emperors and 10 were Qing emperors. In 1406, the third emperor, Zhu Di, decided to move the capital from Nanjing to Beijing. A large-scale construction was started then and completed in 1420. In the following year, 1421, the capital of Ming Dynasty was moved from Nanjing to Beijing.

But unfortunately, natural disasters and man-made calamities happened frequently in the Ming Dynasty. Many main building were burnt down because of lightning and in the war respectively. When the Qing rulers took over Beijing, they rebuilt and renovated most of the buildings, thus resumed the full vitality of the Imperial Palace. The Qing Emperors also paid strong attention to fire prevention. The situation was much better than it was in the Ming Dynasty. In the late Qing Dynasty, because of the corruption of the Qing Government and the slack management, it once again fell into a declined and waned condition.

The Qing dynasty was overthrown by the 1911 revolution led by Dr.Sun-Yat-Sen.On October 10th1925, the forbidden city was converted into a museum and opened to the public. It is the best-preserved imperial palace in China, and it’s also the largest ancient palatial structure in the world. In 1987, it was listed as a world cultural heritage site by UNESCO.

The Forbidden city was also known as the purple forbidden city or Palace Museum, do you know why the imperial city was called the Forbidden City? In the

feudal society, the emperor had supreme power and he believed that he was the person just below heaven but above all the people, so his residence was certainly a forbidden place to the common people. Hence the name “Forbidden City”. In ancient China, astronomers put the stars into three constellations. The Purple Star was located in the center of the universe, and the Palace on the Purple Star was called “Purple Palace”for the God of Heaven to live in. Since the emperor believed that he was the “Son of Heaven”, he called his Forbidden City “Purple Forbidden City”. We have used the name” Palace Museum” since 1925, because here is no longer an imperial palace for the emperor, but a museum with lots of historical relics for people to visit.

The Forbidden City was built along the north-south axis of Beijing, with the “Prospect Hill”at the back, the Alter of Land and Grain to its west and Supreme Ancestral Temple on its east. The Forbidden City is 961 meters long from north to south, and 753 meters wide from east to west. It covers an area of 72 hectares with a total floor space of about 150,000 square meters, and was surrounded with a 10 meters high city wall, and encircled by a 52 meters wide moat. At each corner of the surrounding wall, there is a magnificent watchtower, which was heavily guarded in the old days. There were altogether 230,000 artisans and one million civilians involved in building the forbidden city. It was really a huge construction and a hard job for the Chinese people.

The forbidden city doesn’t have a disordered appearance. The main reason is that all the main buildings in the Forbidden City were built along the central north-south axis. The Forbidden City can be divided into two parts: the Outer Court and the Inner Palace. The Outer Court consists of three main building in the front part of the Forbidden City. This was the palace where the emperors attended the grand ceremonies and conducted state affairs, while the Inner Palace is composed of the rear three main building and the six eastern palaces and six western palaces, was the place where the emperor used to handle daily affairs and it was the living quarters for the emperor, empress and imperial concubines.

There are four gates in each side of the Forbidden City. The Meridian Gate is the main entrance to the Forbidden City. It is called Meridian Gate, because the emperor